


Images

by shinesurge



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 22:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15694536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinesurge/pseuds/shinesurge
Summary: A short catalog of some marks on some people.





	Images

**Author's Note:**

> LET ME LIVE

It's not _unheard of_ for someone to be born without a mark, but it often meant exactly what it implied; the person in question was a soul solitary. Ulrich never understood why people regarded him with pity when he told them. He had been secretly unnerved his whole life at the idea of himself etched on someone else's skin, or finding another person's fingerprints on his. Being issued with a soulmate seemed to imply that he was incomplete himself and, worse, that he owed himself, his future, to someone else. And on the off chance he did find someone he wanted to pair up with, it was inevitable they would be taken from him eventually, by death or by circumstance, one way or another they would be separated. What does one _do_ after that? After part of the soul is just _gone?_

The idea of anything charting his relationships out for him made his skin crawl, and he was relieved in the quiet hours of the night when he could remind himself he was not destined to be owned by anyone. There was hope for him yet.

\----

Phineas' mark was so large it was seen as a birth defect for several years before she grew into it. It spread in fiddly stained-glass patterns from the middle of her back in six fat, sharp tendrils that reached around her neck and up the sides of her face, wound down her legs and stretched over her feet to touch her toes. The thing was a yellow-orange monstrosity that made her conspicuous wherever she went, a feeling she quickly grew accustomed to. She was asked about it frequently and always brushed it off, saying she hadn't met them yet and couldn't say what sort of partner a mark like hers described, but truthfully she found her soulmate before she even understood what one _was._

The seraph certainly didn't know of it, when (she) came to Phineas, but she had her mark all the same, leaving a set of circles on Phineas' back as she seared her way into corporeal being. Two people with the same mark was sometimes seen as a particularly strong bond, one that symbolized the union was something vibrant and new apart from the original parties, but seeing as most soulmates don't _actually_ combine Phineas was very careful about who she explained her situation to.

She had heaved a sigh of perfect contentment, once the dust settled after they'd finally agreed to fuse. With this mystery out of the way, she was free to dedicate her best self to more important ambitions.

\----

Jocasta had had words written on her right wrist, a particularly rare phenomenon many considered romantic, even if it was always disappointing to be told the phrase was only "May I ask who's calling?". Jo, who could not care less about the soulmate horseshit everyone else was so wrapped up in, thought it was hysterical. She hadn't felt right about a lot of things she'd been saddled with when she was born, and her mark was just another to add to the list. The blue, obnoxiously flowery script only served to make her heart flutter a little when she made radio calls, and did little else until a 19 year-old Raven Slight shyly presented her with some longhand prose for a novel in progress. She swore like a sailor.

Much later, in the nova of a dying world, her words were unraveled from her along with the one they belonged to, and she had accepted it as a sign that he was dead. She would eventually wish this assumption was true.

\----

Raven had always been irritated by his mark, a bright fire that blazed up his left arm from fingertip to shoulder. _It didn't match anything!_ The orange, brighter than any tattoo ink, stood out stark against his dark skin and the blues of his clothing. Most annoyingly it _completely_ went against his affinity for working with water magic. One day, Jocasta, resplendent in a coat holding just the same sunset hues as the mark on his arm, snapped her fingers and lit a cigarette held between his shaking fingers. He was lost instantly.

When his skin faded to a shade that couldn't bear the daylight, the color went from his fire too, leaving a writhing black outline in its place. It hardly resembled anything at all.

\----

Like everything else, Crow Gideon flaunted his mark where everyone could see it; a plain white circle outlined on his right palm. It was laughably simplistic for a man who had made a career of going overboard, and its ambiguity had sent plenty of suitors away in frustration. Crow loved each of them as much as any other, but even in their closest moments his thoughts wandered out to other places, brighter things. He heard a siren call no one else could, threaded all through him and binding him to the universe, pulling him inexorably to the sky, to anywhere. Forward.

\----

Soulmate marks were for humans, and Agatha was not human. One also needed a soul for it to have a mate, presumably, and the jury was still out on that. She rarely thought about it. She hardly had the capacity for emotion anyway, and even if her unfortunate existence allowed her the luxury of a partner she certainly wouldn't choose something as...anachronistic, as a human.

Phineas was the first person whose mark had made her jealous, and later despair at her own lack of one. She endured their affair desperately clinging to whatever sweetness she could, knowing it had no other course but to end when Phineas found somebody else. Somebody she was _supposed_ to be with.

When Agatha finally confessed her concern to Phineas some number of years into their relationship, Phineas took matters into her own hands, as she often did. On a rainy afternoon in June, over the left side of Agatha's chest Phineas engraved a pair of circles, and over hers in return Agatha carved her cross.

 


End file.
